you just model through it

Yesterday was my last day of work at my current job and while I realize that I am not moving far (to a lab five minutes away in order to begin grad school), after 1.5 years in the stem cell group (approximately 75% of my time in Israel since aliyah), I get the feeling that slowly, quietly, another milestone in my aliyah has crept up and passed.

I was super lucky (actually, I’d go a little further than that – I was super blessed). The lab was a great place for me to spend the first stages of my aliyah. People were friendly and so helpful about everything and also, I got the feeling that people truly wanted to help me and didn’t feel burdened.

I was fresh off the boat enough that most everyone, even the veteran olim in the lab, found my general cluelessness and sunny optimism adequately entertaining, amusing, and at times, just plain bewildering.

The only people I habitually didn’t jive with too well were the nurses on the clinical side of the department, who looked upon me with equal parts amusement and disdain with an occasional topping of intrigue. And I responded in same. The nurses station occupies a section of the hallway between the lab and my former desk space in the office area, so I traversed their territory tens of times each day.

Until yesterday my interactions with them didn’t really extend beyond them offering me the occasional “As you please, Queen” or “Don’t you ever say excuse me?!?!” (only said when they are completely blocking the hallway with carts of supplies while I meekly try to slip past unnoticed, flattening myself against the wall).

Sometimes our communication was of the non-verbal sort (once, one of them simply picked me up by the waist and placed me aside instead of asking me to move). I told a lot of friends about this, including some native Israelis, and everyone seemed to agree it was sort of Ms. Trunchbull in Matilda-like until one person was like, “Oh in Israel that’s normal. It’s a sign of endearment.”

More often than not, our interactions consisted primarily of Tobi and I passing by the nurse’s station in fits of spastic, uncontrollable laughter to which they would respond with a simple “What happened?” (Note, this was not a friendly “what happened so that we may laugh with you” but rather a “if you obnoxious twits keep this up we will catapult you across the building javelin-style” what happened).

Also, I should probably add that they have likely long suspected that I am either a drug addict and/or sleep around a lot, a misconception of my own doing, given that one of them once spied me and another individual sitting at the nurses station while transferring a fine white powder into a test tube labelled ‘gonorrhea test’ (to be clear, the test tube was sterile and unused and the fine white powder was actually a baking ingredient, but I understand that appearances can deceive).

Anyway, now that you have the full background, I was a little surprised when they called me over after my goodbye party. “Come here! Alissaaaaaa! Come here!” they barked. “We hear that you are leaving us?!? And where will you go?” I told them about starting school and switching labs, an answer to which they demonstrated satisfaction.

“But we will miss your modeling through the halls.”

My modeling through the halls?!?! I looked at them a little disbelievingly.

“You know, that tall guy who used to work here, what was his name, like he used to say…”

And now I remember, when R. used to work in the lab he would always tell me “Alissa, you have a pretty face and your body is very good but no man will ever notice you because of the way you walk. You slouch the arms and always look down and look to be in a great rush.”

And so when I would rush down the hall between lab and our office area, past the nurse’s station, he would call after me “Gait and posture! Gait and posture! Gait and posture!” (I think in some countries this might be considered a very odd form of sexual harassment.)

“We will miss this very much,” they reinforce. “And where are you from, New York?” I can’t believe after nearly two years of working here, we have finally gotten around to these niceties five minutes after my goodbye party. “I’m from Massachusetts, actually.” (Translation: I can’t believe you’d think I’m from New York!!!)

“Oh it is very nice in Boston, my son is there now. I wish he would come home to me but he will go to San Francisco next.” “Yes, Boston and San Francisco are both really nice cities” I reassure her.

A few weeks ago I had another very similar experience. Somewhat more surprising and dramatic, but more personal and less entertaining. Sometimes people who mystify you or disappoint you have good intentions, you just haven’t gathered enough data for those intentions to be revealed.

And sometimes you just need to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume the best of them, as much as I clearly enjoy making caricatures out of people with my vivid imagination on the basis of limited information.

As it turns out, not all gruff and seemingly rude Israelis are people-eaters or former javelin-hurtling school headmistresses. I should know enough about sabras to have this much figured out; I may not be rude or gruff but I can be misleadingly cool and aloof enough to garner an exterior as prickly and hard as the best of them, but surprisingly sweet and soft on the inside.

At the end of the day I realized my relationship with the nurses in the mysterious department I speak of was much more Boo Radley-like than Ms. Trunchbull-like, it just took me a while to see it. And as Tyra Banks once said, whatever happens in life, “you just model through it.” I’m sure the nurses would agree.